


Death

by blackat_greneys



Series: Horsemen's Reins [4]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - Freeform, One Piece Big Bang 2016, infant flatlines once, infant has major heart problems, infant lives, infant surgery, light depictions of surgery, mention of suicide, ventricular septal defect - VSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-01 12:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6520546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackat_greneys/pseuds/blackat_greneys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brook was the typical Grim Reaper everyone thought about when they thought of what Death might look like. He had his cloak and scythe, just to make everyone he reaped know that their thought on his appearance was correct. He also was entirely made of bone. </p><p>Brook made his way up a floor of the hospital to the more intensive care patients. He looked through their charts and noted to himself which ones he should take at that moment and which ones could wait for a while. To Death this was routine. </p><p>He watched as the baby pulled his soul back to him all on his own and secured it even more firmly to his body. Brook didn't understand. No one had ever been able to thwart Death. Not like that. Sure, there were many people that had been brought back quickly by their doctors or others, but never had they brought themselves back like the baby did. He even made a small giggle and kicked in Brook's direction, almost like he was saying, “I’m not afraid of you, Death.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death tries to take

**Author's Note:**

> Death's story is flat lines and surgery.
> 
> Please be cautious if you have any triggers associated with these things. If I have left something out of the tags please inform me so I can add it. Thank you :) and read safe!
> 
> (it does end happy)
> 
> Also please inform me if I have any spelling, grammar, or tense mistakes. I didn't have time for someone to beta for me (I have had a very busy several months) so all mistakes are mine and I would like to fix them. I did quick editing so I know I have some. Thanks!
> 
> Art is by [aryable](http://aryable.tumblr.com) on tumblr!! make sure you show her your love!!

Brook was the typical Grim Reaper everyone thought about when they imagined what Death might look like. He had his cloak and scythe so that everyone he reaped knew that image was correct. He was also entirely made of bones which he knew a lot debated on, because some thought he was simple a moving shadow in a cloak. Brook understood that his image was only as bones to show that no one was immune to Death, since all people were the same on the inside. It was a wonder that he hadn't been made as a human but without skin. Brook took it as a blessing because then he had no reason to make his skull and bone jokes his brothers hated so much. The cloak would have covered everything even if he was that, so it wouldn't have been too bad. Brook was just Death, a floating skeleton that wore a cloak and cut out people's souls with his scythe.

Brook floated around a hospital in Auckland, New Zealand and searched for someone close to death. _Can always find someone in a hospital,_ Brook thought as he made his way up a floor to the more intensive care patients.

He looked through their charts and noted to himself which ones he took at that moment and which ones he had to go back for another day.

To Death this was routine. Stop at a hospital and look through the patient's. Stop at an old age home and look at the elders there. Stop at a mental hospital and look at which ones were ready to kill themselves. All routine and boring. Sometimes Brook really hated being Death.

He couldn't partake in some of the things his brothers could. Famine had found out that they could eat human food while incorporeal, but as Death and being made of only bones he had no stomach for the food to go. _Skull joke,_ Brook thought as he noted another patient on his the list of ones taken, that one had stage four liver cancer.

Two rooms down from the man with cancer, Brook came across a five month old little boy. _Odd_ , Brook wondered before he reached for the boys records to see why he was there. _Heart murmur_ , Brook read, _a ventricular septal defect, or V.S.D., that seems to have grown since diagnosed_. If there was one thing Brook never liked about his job it was taking children. He saw that the boy was scheduled for surgery the next day, but Brook decided he was going to go ahead and take the boy. A hole in the heart was never a good thing. The boys little body was too blue and he was too thin to make it much longer on his own anyway.

Brook swung of his scythe and cut the little baby's soul from his body. He watched as the boy began to fade from the world. Before his last heart beat finished Brook heard the door to the room open and, who he assumed were, the boys parents and doctor walked in.

_Sad they have to see him go_ , Brook thought as he saw the mothers ice blue eyes swell with tears. The father sat himself on the floor off to the side and cried his eyes out while he begged the doctor to save his son.

It took the doctor awhile, but he ended up getting a heart beat out of the boy again. It was the mother, Robin as the father called her, who ended up tying the boy's soul back to himself. She stood there beside him with her hand placed on his head and talked to him.

Brook heard the doctor and the father talk for a short while before the doctor left. He watched as the father sat on the other side of his son and took his very small hand in his. Then they both talked. They talked about nothing and everything. From what some of their friends were up to, “Those will be your aunts and uncles,” the father said. To what they had planned for their son's life, “I hope you will learn as many languages as you want, Tom,” Robin whispered in his ear.

Brook watched as the boy's soul not only reattached itself to his body, but as it made the connection stronger.

_This boy,_ Brook thought as the father eventually fell asleep in his chair with his head near his son and the mother continued to whisper to him, _has a very strong connection to himself._

The child’s, Tom’s, eyes opened and looked to his mother as she continued to whisper to him before he turned his eyes to Brook. _He sees me_ , Brook wondered, _even though I’m just bones_. A laugh broke out of his empty chest as he said, “Skull joke,” to the room.

There was a comprehension in Tom’s eyes when Brook looked back to him. Like to boy could hear him as well. _That can't be_ , Brook thought as he moved around and watched Tom’s eyes follow him. “How can you hear me?” Tom couldn't do much or even really fully understood what Brook said, but he had to have heard him because he twitched at Brook’s words.

Brook knew that sometimes those he took could see him for a short while while they were dying. It meant that if they were brought back they remembered. But Brook had never had anyone see him like that after they were fully healthy again. Being able to perceive him had something to do with the scythe. That since the scythe was a part of Brook and he used it to sever the people from themselves they then gained the ability to look at him for a short while. Supposedly Pestilence’s bow did something similar when the arrow reached the person, but Death had never had that confirmed by his brother. Though if Brook remembered correctly Pestilence didn't use the bow anymore.

Brook looked at the parents, the father that slept with his head near his son and the mother that still lightly talked to him. He felt bad about what he did, but knew he was going to do it again. With scythe in hand Brook slashed it at Tom again. That time there was more resistance when the scythe cut through, but it made severed the soul as it was supposed to. Brook watched again as Tom slowly faded away.


	2. Death ignores

Tom’s mother worked quickly. Too quickly. As soon as she realized that Tom was slipping again she shook her husband awake, Franky she had yelled at him, and made him get the doctor.

 _The doctor won't be needed_ , Brook thought as he watched Tom pull his soul back to him all on his own and secure it even more to his body.

Brook didn't understand. No one had ever been able to thwart Death. Not like this. Sure there were many people that had been brought back quickly by their doctors or others, but never had they brought themselves back like the baby did.

Franky and the doctor made it back to the room just as Tom got breathed normally again. He even made a small giggle and kicked in Brook's direction. Almost like he was saying, “I’m not afraid of you, Death.”

All Brook could do was laugh at the little boy, which caused Tom to laugh even more. It made the doctor and his parents smile for the first time since Brook had arrived.

“I can't take you,” Brook told Tom as the doctor left and the parents took up their seats again. “You have won against Death.” Brook shook his head at that and decided to pull down the hood of his cloak and revealed his skull face and afro. He had given himself his hair style during the 1970’s.

“You might even win against all my other brothers as well,” Brook continued to talk to Tom, just as his parents did, for the rest of the night.

Brook told him about his horse and that it was a sad day when he had accidentally killed it. “I didn’t mean to,” Brook promised Tom, “he moved into the way of my scythe.” Brook swore that the look Tom gave him was of disbelief. The boy might have thought he was lying, but it was the truth dammit.

Brook even talked to him about his brothers. War with his sword to cleave in battle and shield to make sure he lived to fight another. Pestilence and his golden crown of disease that shone bright with his love of spreading ill with his bow. Famine and the scales that told him when someone hungered for something and the hat that held in his own hunger at bay. Brook talked about himself, Death with the scythe that separated, the cloak that made him mysterious, and the pale ferry that he now used to usher on those to the next life.

The next morning arrived with the family fast asleep till the time of the surgery. Brook took it upon himself to go with Tom into the operating room and make sure it was all done right. He watched as they cut the boy's chest open, as they got to the hole in his heart, as they closed it, and as they closed his chest. All in all it took roughly six hours and when it had all finished they took the boy out and back to his room where his parents eagerly waited for him.

During Tom’s week and a half long recovery in the hospital he got visitors. Some of those visitors almost gave Brook a heart attack, _Or they would have if I had a heart. Skull joke!_ Brook thought.

War had walked in, a very human War on the arm, _Or maybe it was War that was the arm_ , of a blond man. Who seemed, as Brook watched him during their visit, to go from a very scary individual to the sweetest one in under a second.

The look War had given him when he first entered the room and saw Brook there was surprise and then really pissed off. The blond on his arm had calmed him some, like he understood what War was. “I’m not here to take him,” Brook said as he held up his bony fingers to show his scythe was hidden away. “I tired, but he pulled himself back.” War looked at him then with surprise again before his eyes flickered to Robin and Franky holding their son. “He can hear and see me too,” Brook continued to tell War, he knew that War wasn't going to talk back with all the people there. War nodded slightly before a smile split his face after the blond ushered him over with the call of his name, Zoro. Zoro then stepped over and looked down at Tom. 

_War must be the reason_ , Brook thought, _that Tom can see and hear me._ Brook nodded to himself at the idea. It was the only thing that made sense. _If War has been around him since his conception._

The next day Brook watched a young man in a doctor's coat shuffle into the room with a much changed Pestilence that floated after him. Again both looked at each other in surprise, before Pestilence looked upset. Brook saw Pestilence's eyes quickly glance over to Tom before they fell back on Brook.

Brook repeated the same speech he did the day before for Zoro. He even mentioned that Zoro had been there. “Yeah,” Pestilence responded, “Zoro, that’s War’s human name now, apparently he has been solid for around four years now.” Brook didn't bother to hide his shock, instead he used it to look over Pestilence and saw the change in his clothes, the dulled crown and broken bow. Brook put it together when Pestilence whispered that he wanted to go by Usopp. His two brothers had found something else to live for.

A couple of days after Tom and his parents had more visitors. Two women, one with bright orange hair and the other with blue, who were followed by Famine. Brook was surprised again, but not as much as he was the first two times. 

_How has this group of people all swayed us?_ Brook thought as he took in Famine's new appearance, something that the other didn't seem to be used to yet. His basket seemed to have a bottom, his clothes looked fresh and clean for once, and his scales hung limp at his side.

Brook found himself having the same conversation for the third time. It was during this one, right after Famine mentioned that he was thinking of going by the name Luffy, that Brook realized something. Tom had all four Horsemen at his side. He could perceive them and hear them when they were invisible. _In other words_ , Brook thought, _he is our new creator._ The one to change them, well maybe it wasn't necessarily Tom for all of them, but he was the center point where they all converged. Tom was, for all intents and purposes, their leader.

There was a need in Brook to change like his brothers had when he learned this. He changed his cloak into something a little more practical, something less mysterious and more dashing, like a suit. He changed the form of his scythe into a sabre that he hid inside a cane. He even changed his ferry into a pale colored top hat, where he decided to keep all the souls that he took. But he vowed that he was now only going to take those that were on the verge of death only.

Brook watched as Robin and Franky took Tom home at the end of his recovery at the hospital. Brook was even still there two weeks later when Robin and Franky held a small party for his recovery.

They were all there, the Four Horsemen, to celebrate a boy, who was possibly going to live just as long as them, but who had all the love of the world thrown on his shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed!
> 
> Remember if I left out any tags you think should be added, please let me know. Also about spelling, grammar, or tense mistakes.
> 
> Thanks!


End file.
